A dental implant consists of a screw made of a biocompatible material, typically titanium, coated, if need be, with additional substances aimed at enhancing adhesion, osseointegration and resistence to bacterial attacks. The implant consists of an upper portion designed to emerge from the gingival arch that includes an internal thread to fix a connection device to which the dental crown will be secured.
FIG. 1A shows one of the said connection devices L on which a stump M will be positioned, based on the conventional technique. The crown C will be then secured to the aforementioned stump M, as displayed in FIG. 1C. Both the stump M and the crown C are typically realized with materials that are suitable for dental uses. The procedure is first based on injecting some ceramic material within a mold, reproducing the shape of the stump and/or the crown, followed by baking in an oven, finishing off and polishing.
The foregoing procedure is carried out in a dental laboratory, equipped with the necessary equipments and endowed with the required skills.
Once this procedure has been completed, the realized prosthesis or the stump are glued to the connection device L and the whole work will be finally assembled with the dental implant, already positioned in the patient's oral cavity.
The procedure described above, besides being highly demanding in terms of high technical skills, is long and laborious and the patient is obliged to undergo several dental sessions, with significant time intervals between the moment when the dentist obtains the impression and the moment when the dental technician realizes the prosthesis.
Recently, new techniques have been spreading: the latter in turn are based on CAD/CAM system prosthesis design as well as on milling machine-assisted manufacturing, wherein the said milling machines are installed either in a dental laboratory or in a dental surgery. However, the realization of the stump M to be assembled with the connection device L still has to be carried out following the traditional system described above.
It would thus be desirable to enhance the realization procedure of a dental prosthesis in such a way that its manufacturing, or at least part thereof, is carried out directly in the dental surgery, with no need of a dental technician's specific skills. In this way, indeed, the manufacturing time could be significantly reduced, thus decreasing the number of dental sessions the patient has to undergo.